


Wives' Tales

by merrymegtargaryen



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Infertility, Miscarriage, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-10 19:24:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5597866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/pseuds/merrymegtargaryen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles chronicling the lives of the women who became the Immortan's wives. One drabble for every woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Becky

Immortan Joe took thirty wives in over eight thousand days, women from all over the Wasteland. The first of these women was Becky.

Technically three of them had been taken together, but Becky was the first woman that the Immortan Joe had laid eyes on; so, he tells her, she is his “first” wife.

There had been other women before Becky, brutally claimed and brutally kept, but none of them had been wives. She still remembers what husbands and wives were in the time before the Fall, remembers getting dressed up to go to her aunt's wedding. This ceremony, with her and two other women swathed in white, the Immortan Joe booming his promises to love and cherish them so long as they bear him sons, feels like a child's poor pantomime of those weddings. But there is food and shelter and safety, and above all, water up here, so she bites back her protestations, because this is better than the life she lived in the Citadel's shadow. 

He takes them that night, one at a time. Becky is his first wife, and so she is the first woman he takes. It is not good, but it is not the worst. She closes her eyes and thinks of the little pool of water he carved out for them. When he is gone she will take a bath and she will drink all the water she likes and she will sleep in her bed. 

It is not good, but it is not the worst.

There are books to read and a piano to play. Becky only remembers “Chopsticks”, and with some effort she and Cara figure out “Heart and Soul”. Cara is kind and she is pretty and before very long she is pregnant. The Immortan swells with pride, comes to visit his expecting wife almost every night.

“Soon the Citadel will be full of our children,” he tells them.

But Becky and Jasmine do not conceive, and Cara bleeds out three children in two years. 

It is not good.

The Immortan comes to them one day not long after Cara's third miscarriage. “I am disappointed,” he tells them. “You are healthy young women, and yet, in two years none of you have given me a son.”

Cara lets out a sob.

“You are all dismissed,” he tells them. “I have found new wives to replace you.”

“What if none of them give you a son either?” Jasmine asks.

The Immortan hits her. “My War Boys will escort you out of the Citadel. Goodbye.”

They leave with nothing but the clothes on their back, white linen that is as useless as bare skin out in the wasteland. They stare up at the lift as it ascends, the Wretched and War Boys alike regarding them curiously.

“What do we do now?” Becky asks.

“We survive,” says Jasmine. 

They stay together for a while, but the years pull them apart. Jasmine falls in love with a Wretched man and braves the Wasteland with him. Cara never fully readjusts to life outside of the Vault, and one morning they find her without a pulse. Becky hitches a ride to Gas Town and makes a new life for herself there. She finds work in the People Eater's kitchens, and it is not good, but it is not the worst. 

Years pass, and one day the work stops in the kitchens. The People Eater and Immortan Joe are dead, the Bullet Farmer and many of their War Boys killed with them. It was the Immortan's wives, they say, women who did not want to be things anymore. 

Becky finds that she does not care. She is still alone and she still needs to put food in her mouth and have a place to sleep at night. People Eater or no, there is work to be done.

A council of Gastonians replace the People Eater, and they invite Becky to join them. She refuses, choosing to remain in the kitchens where there is work and food and shelter. 

“Why stay in the kitchens when you can help create a new Gas Town?” they ask her. “Don't you want to be part of this new era?”

“I don't much care what happens,” she says honestly. “I just want to survive.”

They frown. “But you were married to the Immortan. You were his first wife.”

“That's why I don't care,” she says, and she leaves them.

A couple families plan to move to Barter Town. Becky offers food as payment and they take her with them. Barter Town is louder and busier than she would like, but there is always work and Becky likes to keep occupied. She has a place to sleep and her stomach does not go empty and she sometimes goes days at a time without remembering the Immortan. 

It is not good. But it is not the worst.


	2. Jasmine

Jasmine was born in the middle of the Fall. She came into the world surrounded by smoke and gunfire in the backseat of a car. “You're a survivor,” her mother used to tell her.

Jasmine survived the Fall, and when she grew older she survived the Wasteland. She found shelter in the shadow of the Citadel, and while others died around her she remained standing.   
The Immortan takes her for his bride and Jasmine survives this, too. Her belly never swells with child and she can't help thinking how funny it is that she could survive so much and yet nothing will take life inside of her. She wonders if it will always be this way when the Immortan sends her and his other two wives back to the Wretched. 

“What do we do now?” Becky asks.

“We survive,” Jasmine tells her.

And they do. They live off of the water they can gather and the scraps they can find and they sleep huddled together for warmth. Jasmine meets a man named Milo and she loves him as she could never love the Immortan. 

“Let's leave,” he says one night. “Together. Find someplace where we don't have to fight to survive.”

They leave the Citadel with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a handful of possessions. She hugs Becky and Cara and wishes them well before she takes Milo's hand and treks into the Wasteland with him. It should kill them, they should never make it as far as they do, but somehow they survive. They barter for passage from place to place until they find a place they decide to call home. It's on the outskirts of the Wasteland, with just enough water and green to feel like the places Jasmine knew as a child. They scavenge for a living, bringing whatever they find to market and selling it. What they can't sell they keep, and when they build a house they fill it with the odds and ends they've kept. 

They fill the house with children, too. Four of them, all boys. Sometimes when she watches them, Jasmine laughs.

“What's so funny?” Milo asks her.

“It's nothing,” she always says, because she doesn't like to talk about her first husband. Her first husband hit her and cast her away because he could not put life in her. And now she has four healthy boys, the sons the Immortan wanted and couldn't have. He had blamed her because of what he could not do. She wonders if he has his precious sons now. She wonders what he would do if he saw her own. She wonders what happened to Becky and Cara and if they ever managed to survive that terrible place.

“I'm laughing,” she says one day, “Because I survived.”

Another man might have called her strange, but Milo smiles and kisses her head. “You didn't just survive,” he tells her. “You flourished.”

Jasmine likes that word. She decides she isn't a survivor anymore—she's a flourisher.


	3. Cara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little darker than the first two. I will never be graphic when it comes to rape, but this chapter may be triggering for some. That being said, a lot of the content in this fic can be triggering and if you are worried, I will not be offended if you don't read. I am always happy to answer messages about the content of my fic.
> 
> This chapter also delves a little into depression, just a heads-up.
> 
> Thanks for those who have comments and kudos--your readership is more appreciated than you know.

When Cara was a little girl, when the Fall had not much bothered her, she used to play games. She and her sister would play princesses locked in a tower, play brides at a wedding, play mothers to plastic baby dolls. 

But real life, as Cara was to discover, was nothing like the games she used to play.

Her family travels through the Wasteland, and one by one they fall away until it is only Cara. She crawls to the shadow of the Citadel and watches, always watches, for a few drops of precious water from the Immortan's death head.

She watches him, up in his tower of stone, but what she doesn't know is that he watches her too. At least, that's what he tells her after his white-painted War Boys find her and bring her up into the Citadel. 

“You are so lovely,” he tells her, caressing her short black hair. “I want you to be my wife.”

Their wedding is nothing like the games Cara used to play—there are two other brides beside her and all of their necks ache from the Immortan's brand. The white linen tangled around them is nothing like the gauzy material of Cara's mother's wedding dress, and the Immortan's stern vows feel nothing like the childish words of love and hope she and her sister used to invent.

The worst part is the wedding night, when he takes them one at a time. Cara smashes her hands over her ears while he takes Becky and Jasmine, screaming inside her own head. He takes her last of all, and none of the games she played with her sister ever prepared her for this. No matter how often it happens, Cara never gets used to it. She invents a new game, one where she screws her eyes shut and pretends she's somewhere, anywhere but here until he's done with her. 

The days are better, but not much. There are books to read and a piano to play, and sometimes Cara and Becky tinker with it. Most of the time they sit and stare. They are not allowed outside of their tower, and the only people they see are the Immortan and the Organic Mechanic. Sometimes the Immortan's sons will visit with their father. Corpus has a stunted body and Rictus a stunted mind; Scrotus has neither of these things, but there is something not right about him. She can't put her finger on it, but he scares her more than his father does. 

“If we have babies,” Jasmine says quietly, “I'm not letting them anywhere near that one.”

Privately, Cara thinks the Immortan might have the same idea.

Cara is the first to become pregnant. She can't help glowing at the thought—whatever else happens to her in here, at least she will have a baby. It will be so much better than the plastic dolls she and her sister used to carry—it will be a real baby, a real person she can hold and love. And maybe, if it is a healthy son, the Immortan will stop coming to her in the night quite so often. Perhaps he will even let her out of the tower once in a while. She wonders what motherhood will be like.

She doesn't find out, because she loses the baby after only a few weeks. She cries and does not stop until the Immortan hits her.

“We'll try again,” he says brusquely.

They do, but it takes a few months before she conceives again. She loses this baby, too, and does not dare to cry again; instead, she sits on the stairs and stares out the window. She does not eat or drink or speak unless forced. 

“She's depressed,” Becky says. “She needs help.”

But there is no one to help, and when the Organic Mechanic tells her she's pregnant again she only goes back to her window and stares. She loses this baby, too, and when the Immortan leaves her she allows herself to cry. She's tired of playing this game. Princess in a tower, wife, mother—it's a game she never wins.

It ends when the Immortan comes to them one day and tells them that they are dismissed. He has found new wives to play his game.

She stays close to Becky and Jasmine after they are sent back to the Wretched. The other two women scavenge and scrape, but Cara cannot make herself do it. She only sits and stares out of a window that doesn't exist. 

“I wonder what she sees,” Jasmine says when she thinks Cara cannot hear her.

Cara wants to tell her that she sees two little girls playing a game. There is a wedding gown that is too big for them, two plastic dolls with painted-on faces, a plastic tiara and a foam sword. It is a game that has no end, and a game that no one can lose. It is the only game Cara knows how to play. 

But she doesn't say that. She only stares, and waits for this new game to end.


	4. Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is much more uplifting than the last one, I promise! And a few familiar characters show up as well ;)

Her mother named her Hope, “Because,” she said, “The world could use some hope right now.”

Hope has always liked the story, liked the idea that she was something people needed. 

“I can't lose you,” her mother says, and it makes Hope swell with pride. She cannot be lost. She is needed. She is valuable.

It's a blessing, until it becomes a curse.

Immortan Joe needs healthy sons, and he needs healthy women to make them. He is riddled with lumps and pustules she never saw from hundreds of feet below and he stinks. He brands her and wraps her in white and takes her for his bride in front of all his War Boys. There is another woman with her, and a girl who can't be more than fifteen. They are his brides, too, healthy women to bear healthy sons.

He is not cruel that first night, but he is not gentle either, and the girl cries for a long time after he leaves. Hope is sticky and sore and she wants to cry, too, but she doesn't. She sits beside the girl and holds her close.

“It's all right, he's gone, it's all right,” she says.

The girl sobs. “But he'll come back.”

“What's your name?” she asks, because she doesn't know what else to say.

The girl wipes her eyes. “Furiosa. What's yours?”

“I'm Hope.”

Furiosa gives a bitter snort. 

.

Iluka is found pregnant mere weeks after “marrying” the Immortan. 

“I wish my mother was here,” Iluka confides. “Furiosa and I come from the Green Place of Many Mothers. It's a tradition to have your mothers at the birth, to welcome the new baby into the world. I don't know what to do—I always thought she'd be there.” 

It makes Hope sad. She waits until the next time the Immortan visits them, and when he's done huffing and puffing over her she makes her request.

“She needs someone to help her.”

“She'll have Organic.”

“She needs a woman, Immortan, a mother. It's important to her.”

He ponders for a long moment. “I'll see what I can do.”

Iluka's belly is round and full by the time the History Woman joins them. Her name is Miss Giddy and she is to live with them, look after them. 

“Did he force you to come here?” Furiosa asks.

Miss Giddy looks at her strangely. “Of course not. He offered me food and shelter and protection in exchange for educating you and looking after you. He is my employer.”

“That's cute,” Furiosa says nastily before stalking off. 

Miss Giddy is covered with ink, strings of words that make sense only to her. She teaches the women about the history of the world, explains why the world fell and how. They are in the middle of a lesson when  
Iluka's water breaks. She gives birth to twins—girls. 

The Immortan barely masks his disappointment. “There will be more,” he says, more to himself than to anyone. 

“They are your children,” Miss Giddy says in some surprise.

“Yes,” he says, pausing in front of the door. “But they are girls.”

Hope watches as it occurs to Miss Giddy for perhaps the first time what exactly she has gotten herself into.

.

The twins die a few days later. Miss Giddy wraps them as gently as if they were still alive and gives them to the Organic Mechanic. 

.

It is only a matter of months before Iluka's belly swells again. This is her second pregnancy, but Hope and Furiosa have yet to conceive.

“Maybe we never will,” Furiosa says hopefully.

Secretly, Hope wants her to be right. If they never conceive, he'll release them the way he did his other wives. She could see her mother again. And Furiosa—she could go back to the Green Place. Her mother is dead, she said as much, but she has many mothers, women who care about her and can help her forget the time she's spent here.

The Immortan seems to also wonder if they will ever conceive; as Iluka's belly grows bigger, Hope finds the Immortan watching her and Furiosa in a cold, calculated sort of way. 

“You've been here two years,” he tells her one night. “And you still haven't conceived a child. Do you know what I did to my first wives when they couldn't have children?”

She feels herself go cold. “Let us stay until Iluka has her baby,” she begs. “Please. Just until she has her baby and then...and then...”

He considers her. “All right,” he says finally. “In the meantime, I will look for women to replace you.” He shifts in the bed. “You may send in Furiosa.”

Hope crawls into Miss Giddy's bed and lets the older woman hold her. “You're a mother, aren't you, Miss Giddy?”

“Yes.” the History Woman tightens her embrace. “I have a daughter about your age.”

“What happened to her?” Hope breathes the words against the older woman's ear.

Miss Giddy pauses. “She met a man.” She doesn't elaborate and Hope doesn't ask her to. “Look.”

She lifts her lamp and shows Hope three names on her knucklebone—Hope, Iluka, Furiosa. “So I will carry you with me, no matter what happens.”

Hope sits up. “Can you write their names on me too? And yours?”

Miss Giddy smiles. “I would be happy to.”

It hurts, but Hope watches in fascination as the History Woman carefully inks the words into her skin. Iluka, Furiosa, Miss Giddy. Her hand throbs but she wears it proudly. “Now I'll carry you with me, too,” she says, and the older woman presses a kiss to her head.

Iluka's baby comes, and like his older sisters, he dies a few days later. Iluka has one more opportunity before her three chances are over, but there are no more chances for Hope and Furiosa. The younger woman, to everyone's surprise, requests to work with the War Boys in the garage.

“What are you doing?” Hope whispers when the Immortan isn't listening. 

Furiosa gives her a tired look, and Hope is startled to realize how much older the girl looks. She isn't the crying child she comforted in the night anymore. “I can't get back to my home on foot. I need something from the garage.”

“You'll die before you get out of the Citadel,” Hope warns her.

The look Furiosa gives her is cold and proud. “We'll just see.”

Hope hugs Iluka and then Miss Giddy holds her tight.

“I'll carry you with me,” she whispers into the older woman's hair.

“And I'll carry you with me,” Miss Giddy promises. She slips something small and smooth into Hope's hand, but she doesn't dare look to see what it is. There are tears in their eyes when Rictus pulls them apart, and then Hope is walking out of the Vault for the first time since she walked into it.

The Wretched scream and shout and stare as she descends, and there is something beautiful and terrible about all of it. She looks down at her hand and realizes that Miss Giddy gave her one of her pens. To write more names on her skin, to write strings of words that make sense only to her. She smiles in spite of it all and wonders what she will write first.


	5. Iluka

When the white-painted demons from the west steal them away, Mary Jo Bassa fights until there is no fight left in her.

“Promise me you'll look after Furiosa,” she rasps to her initiate daughter. “Promise you'll take care of her.”

“I promise,” Iluka vows.

But Iluka cannot protect Furiosa from Immortan Joe. He brands them and wraps them in white and claims them as his in front of all his War Boys. 

“Don't touch Furiosa,” she pleads when he takes her that night. “You can have me, but don't touch her.”

He laughs in her face. “She is a bit young,” he admits. “But not too young to give me a son.”

Iluka thinks about fighting him, but then she remembers what happened to Mary Jo Bassa when she fought back. Iluka can't look after Furiosa if she's dead. 

.

She hears Furiosa crying after he leaves and thinks of going to her. But shame rises up in her throat like bile, shame that she couldn't keep her promise and look after the girl. She wonders if Mary Jo Bassa can see them from the plains of silence, hopes that she cannot. No mother should see her daughter like this. 

Iluka distracts him from Furiosa whenever she can, but there is only so much she can do. He is determined to have a son, and his determination turns into desperation when Hope and Furiosa do not conceive and none of Iluka's children live longer than a few days. Secretly, she is glad—as much as she longs for a child of her own, she does not want it to be from him. He wants sons he can turn into warlords, men who would burn the Green Place to ashes if they knew of it. There is only so much Iluka can do, but she is glad this is something she cannot do. 

.

She is putting her son to sleep when Furiosa sits with her, listens to the baby's wheezing breaths. He will not live long.

“I heard Him talking to Hope,” Furiosa finally says. She has changed so much in the last two years, almost unrecognizable from the Swaddle Dog girl who came here. “He's getting rid of us soon. As soon as he finds two wives to replace us.”

Iluka feels her blood run cold. “He's not sending me away?”

Furiosa shakes her head. “He's giving you one more chance. But he's tired of waiting for us.”

Iluka remembers her mother, who took her and his motorcycle and left him for the Green Place. She wishes she could do that now, take a motorcycle with Furiosa and ride back there. 

Furiosa seems to have a similar idea. “I'm gonna ask him if I can work in the garage with the War Boys,” she says. “So I'll be close by. And whenever he lets you out of here, we'll steal a bike and head back home.”

Iluka gives her a small, sad smile. “You don't know how long I'll be here,” she says. “I don't know either. I could lose another baby in a year, or I could have a healthy child and he could keep me here forever. It could take years for me to conceive again. You should leave while you can.”

“I don't care how long it takes,” Furiosa says, the words flying like sparks. “My mother was your initiate mother. That makes us sisters. Family. And I'm not abandoning you here with him. I don't care if I have to wait ten years. If it means we can both go back home, it'll be worth it.”

Iluka feels like crying, but she doesn't. Mary Jo Bassa would not want her to cry. “I promised your mother I'd look after you. I've failed her.”

“There are some promises you can't keep,” Furiosa says, and suddenly she looks years older. “I'll wait for you, Iluka, even if I have to steal you from him myself.”

Iluka presses a kiss to the younger woman's head. “There are some promises you can't keep,” she echoes. “Don't let that be one of them.”

Her son dies in the night, and Immortan Joe finds two new wives in a matter of days. Iluka embraces Furiosa in the Vuvalini way, with their right hands touching each other's heads. Iluka wishes she could say something, some parting words of comfort or wisdom, but the Immortan's imperator rips them apart before she can think of anything to say and takes Furiosa down to the garage. Rictus escorts Hope out of the Vault, and Immortan Joe gives Iluka a considerate look. “The other women will be here shortly,” he tells her. “See that you prepare them.” He leaves, and Iluka finally allows herself to cry. 

Miss Giddy pats her hand. “You'll see them again someday,” she says. “I promise, this won't be the last time.”

“Don't make promises you can't keep,” Iluka whispers. She drags a hand across her face and waits. For the women, for her release, for Furiosa and the Green Place.


	6. Furiosa

Furiosa waits for four hundred days. 

The War Boys stare at her at first. Even when she shaves her hair and binds her chest and covers herself in white powder, they stare at her. She tries to keep her head down, tries not to draw even more attention to her than there already is, but the stares unsettle her. They work their way below her skin, crawling into the gaps in her spine, tightening and tensing until she is ready to snap. She pounces on a War Boy for staring at her for too long, bloodies his face and her knuckles. It feels good to hit, to smear his powder and stain it with his own blood. She pretends it's the Immortan's face, feels it crack and give with satisfaction. By the time they pull her off, the War Boy's face is damaged beyond repair. 

The satisfaction is fleeting—the stares only get worse, the curiosity growing over this discarded breeder. She ducks her head and makes herself invisible. Soon, she promises herself. Soon Iluka will have another baby, and it will die just like its older siblings and the Immortan will throw her away with all his other wives and Furiosa will find her and they will ride east together. Her mother is dead, but Katie Concannon will still be there, and Valkyrie, and the Green Place, and that will be enough. It's the only thing that keeps her going, the only thing that forces her stiff fingers to move around car parts, makes her swallow the acid in her throat and grit her teeth when she feels the stares. 

She waits for four hundred days. On the four hundredth day, an imperator rounds up the War Boys.

“What's going on?” a gawky War Boy in front of her asks as they're herded to the same chamber where she became a bride. 

“Immortan's sending his wife to Valhalla,” the imperator says gruffly. 

Furiosa's spine stiffens but she doesn't dare ask which wife. There are three, and it could be any one of them. It might not be Iluka. But as soon as Furiosa enters the hall, she knows. There is a body on the altar shrouded in white, and beside it stand two women who are not Iluka. Furiosa's stomach turns. She never considered that Iluka might die. Iluka was Vuvalini, Mary Jo Bassa's initiate daughter, Furiosa's honorary sister. Furiosa feels bile rise up in her throat. Iluka was supposed to live, to jump on a bike with Furiosa and ride east with guns blazing. She was never supposed to die like this, strangled and suffocated by a man. Furiosa falls back, stands in the shadows in the back of the cavern. Any closer and she doesn't trust herself. One of the women, she realizes now, is round with child—the other is holding a baby. It's smart, Furiosa realizes even through the haze. Even though he lost one wife he's made two babies, and he wants his War Boys to know it. She wonders if they know about all of Iluka's babies, if they know that Furiosa couldn't have any. This may be the first time they've ever seen one of his babies. 

“My boys,” the Immortan rumbles. “You have lost a queen today.”

A ripple passes through the War Boys.

The Immortan keeps talking, but Furiosa can only hear a loud buzzing. The brand on her neck gets hot and stings and her fingers curl in fists. The War Boys around her sign the V-8 and chant, and suddenly it's all too much. She slips out of the chamber, and when no one follows her she makes a run for it. She's on the bike and ready to rev it up when someone jerks her off. 

“Get off!” she shouts, lashing out, but the grip on her arm only tightens.

“Quiet!” It's Ace, one of the older War Boys. He's got to be eleven thousand days old, older than most of them. “You wanna get caught?”

“I'll kick your teeth in if you don't let go,” she spits.

“Go ahead,” he spits right back. “It'll make lots o' noise.”

Furiosa stills. “Why are you here?”

“To save you the trouble.” He lets go of her arm, shoving her back a step. “You can't steal the Immortan's property. You take a bike and he'll want it back. It doesn't matter if you were his wife. He'll send scouts after you and then what? You'll try to fight 'em off, and they'll either kill ya or drag ya back to the Immortan. He won't protect you anymore.”

“What if I kill whoever comes after me?” she asks stubbornly. 

“Whatever the Immortan saw in you, it wasn't brains.” Ace shakes his head. “Don't you get it? He'll keep sending war parties after you, even if it means coming after you himself.”

“It's just a bike--”

“It's his property.”

They scowl at each other for a long moment before Furiosa finally tears her eyes away. “Fine. I won't leave. Tonight.”

The Ace snorts. “That'll have to do.” He gives her a shove from behind. “Now get back in there.”

“I don't want to.”

He growls. “Then go to your bunk and cry for all I care. Just don't make trouble.”

Furiosa doesn't want to take orders from this War Boy who should be dead. But she knows he'll follow her until he's convinced she won't run away again, so she storms back to the barracks and curls up in her bed. She doesn't cry, refuses to let the tears fall. Her fingers curl in fists and the brand on her neck stings and her heart aches so badly for home that she thinks it might kill her. But she will not die, will not let this place strangle and suffocate her as it did to Iluka. She will live, and she will make it back to the Green Place, and she will make Him rue the day he took her from it.


	7. Umaya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is formatted very differently from the others, but I hope it's a good read all the same. Thanks all who have read and left kudos, and especially thank you to everyone who's commented! I really enjoy your comments and I appreciate you taking the time to leave them. Happy reading!

In the Vault, the Immortan told them that the air was clean, that it was good, healthy air. But it didn't feel clean or good or healthy. It was suffocating. Maybe it was the smell. Maybe it was the fear. Whatever it was, Umaya never breathed easily again. Even now, even fifteen years after the metal door clanged shut behind her, the stink and the fear follow her, suffocate her. 

Not that Gas Town has particularly breathable air. It's a different kind of stink, but at least it doesn't smell like Him. At least it doesn't smell like Fear. 

Umaya wakes up one morning and, for the first time in eighteen years, is able to breathe again.

She lies in bed for a long, still moment, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. There are gentle snores from the cot in the corner, and outside she can hear the faint din of machines, of a city full of people going about their days. She takes a long, deep breath, in through her nose, out of her mouth. There is no stink in the air, no fear, no suffocation. It feels like a lifetime ago since she was able to breathe like this.

She gets up slowly, savoring the way her lungs fill with air. She doesn't know how to be herself, and in a way, it's like she is herself again. She dresses quietly and pins back her hair, and by the time she is finished her son is awake.

Micah is three thousand, six hundred and ninety days old, and on every single one of those three thousand, six hundred and ninety days, Umaya has looked at him and thought about the Immortan. Micah is not the Immortan's son, of course—she could never give the Immortan the son he wanted, only a stillbirth and two who were lost before they could be born. The Immortan told her that it was her fault. “Look at your sisters,” he would tell her. “Iluka the Fertile gave me sons, and Lychorida the Blessed. But you and Verbena have not. It can't be my fault since I have sons by your sisters. So something must be wrong with you.” She laughed when she gave birth to Micah, laughed when he let out his first scream and the women told her she had a healthy son. In a way, she wished the Immortan could have seen her. Look at me now, you smug bastard, she thought as she held her son for the first time. Look at my healthy son. 

But the Immortan could never know she had given birth to a healthy son. He could never know that she had done with another man what was impossible with him. She didn't know what he would do, but she knew he wouldn't just leave her and Micah alone, which is why she had kept her life before Gas Town such a secret. She had never told anyone about her time in the Vault, never let anyone know she had anything to do with Immortan Joe. Everyone thought she was a wanderer, a pregnant woman who came crawling to Gas Town for shelter. It wasn't a lie, it was just a piece of a story that had never been fully told. She looks at Micah now, can't help smiling at his sleep-tousled hair and the bleariness in his eyes. He is quite possibly the most perfect thing she has ever seen. “How did you sleep, baby?”

“All right.” He pulls on his clothes, grimaces when she licks her finger and tries to smooth down his hair. “Mum, is everything okay?”

“I think so. Why wouldn't it be?” she asks, wondering if he can feel it too. 

He cocks his head. “You look...different.”

“You know what, baby? I feel different.” She touches his cheek. “Come on. Let's get breakfast before there's nothing left.”

She spends the day in the refinery, Micah working diligently beside her. When he was a baby she used to strap him to her back and work, and as soon as he was old enough he began to help her. There aren't many children in Gas Town, but all of them were raised the same way. There are no schools, no nurseries. A child is your responsibility, your burden to bear. If you stay home, you don't work, and if you don't work, you don't get rations. It's rough, but so is everything in the Wasteland. There isn't a lot of talking in the refinery on normal days, but today, as Umaya is quickly discovering, isn't a normal day.

“They're dead!” a boy not much older than Micah shouts, running into the refinery. The work stops, the clatter falling into a curious silence. “Immortan Joe and all his War Boys are dead! Even the People Eater and the Bullet Farmer! All of them, killed by an imperator!”

The refinery explodes in a flurry of chatter. There is a mass exodus from the refinery to learn more, but Umaya cannot seem to make her legs move.

“Come on, Mum!” Micah urges, and he tugs her to her feet and outside. 

There's a War Boy in the mess hall, one who looks like he's been to hell and back. He tells the story over and over again for newcomers, but no matter how many times he tells it it doesn't sink in.  
Immortan Joe is dead.

Umaya leaves the mess hall and stumbles to her room, sinks down on her bed and stares at the wall.

The man who took her, raped her, beat her, and abandoned her is dead. The man who haunts her dreams and her waking hours, whose shadow she always sees out of the corner of her eye, is dead. An immortal man made mortal—and by a woman, no less. 

Micah finds her a long time later, climbs onto the bed with her and wraps his small body around hers. “Mum?” he ventures. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

She wonders if she should tell him. Ten years of silence to protect him, to protect both of them—how would she even start?

“Everything is just fine,” she tells him, pulling him closer. “I promise.” She takes a deep breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth, and smiles.


End file.
